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Portuguese Meatballs

This recipe comes from Livro de Cozinha da Infanta D. Maria (Imprensa Nacional – Casa Da Moeda, 1987). This codice comes from the end of the 15th or early 16th Century, and is held in the National Library of Naples. It does not appear to have been translated into English, although it was the subject of a PhD thesis in romance languages in 1964. This is my very first translation out of the book; eventually I plan to translate the whole thing.

Take the boneless meat of pork or very fat sheep, and mince it finely, then take flour that has been sifted through a silk sieve, and take the hard-cooked yolks of ten or twelve eggs; and then make meatballs the size of pelotas (handballs that weigh about 95 gr) with an egg yolk and minced meat and then coat each meatball in flour, ten place them in a pot with butter that is boiling on the coals, or else in a broth of sheep fat mixed with butter, and add a few sprigs of herbs. And then cover the pan, but stir it so as not to break the meatballs, an let them cook until the broth is thickened, then lay them on a plate with the broth (carefully so they don’t break) and if you wish, add spices such as clove and saffron, pepper and ginger. If there is only a little broth, you can add to it the broth from other pans.

To do this as a modern recipe, I would likely use ground pork and add my spices and herbs directly to the pork, then mold it around my hard-cooked egg yolks before coating with flour and frying. One pound of pork should be sufficient to coat a dozen yolks, with no more than 1/2 tsp of ground cloves and saffron, and 1/4 tsp of pepper and ginger. I might add parsley directly in the meatballs, but could add sprigs of oregano and even a bit of green onion to the fat that the meatballs are fried in.